Rated G, directed by Jean-Pierre Jeunet, with Audrey Tautou (Amelie Poulain), Mathieu Kassovitz (Nino Quincammpoix), Rufus (Amelie's father), Yolande Moreau (Madeleine Wallace), running time: 122 minutes. In French, with Chinese subtitles.
Amelie Poulain is a waitress in a Montmarte cafe who lives a quiet life in a building occupied by some unusual characters; a weepy conciege, a painter with fragile bones who each year repaints a celebrated Renoir, and a dyspeptic grocer. When one day she finds a box of childhood memories stashed in her apartment decades earlier, she vows to return the contents to its estranged owner. This simple act of kindness alters the course of her life as she dedicates herself to becoming a doer of increasingly complex good deeds for the woebegone -- along the way, of course, discovering love. Jeunet, who's never made an upbeat film in his life, set out to do just that here. Given the film's popularity in France, he seems to have been successful. Fifty million French people can't be wrong. Or so the saying goes.
In 2020, a labor attache from the Philippines in Taipei sent a letter to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs demanding that a Filipina worker accused of “cyber-libel” against then-president Rodrigo Duterte be deported. A press release from the Philippines office from the attache accused the woman of “using several social media accounts” to “discredit and malign the President and destabilize the government.” The attache also claimed that the woman had broken Taiwan’s laws. The government responded that she had broken no laws, and that all foreign workers were treated the same as Taiwan citizens and that “their rights are protected,
A white horse stark against a black beach. A family pushes a car through floodwaters in Chiayi County. People play on a beach in Pingtung County, as a nuclear power plant looms in the background. These are just some of the powerful images on display as part of Shen Chao-liang’s (沈昭良) Drifting (Overture) exhibition, currently on display at AKI Gallery in Taipei. For the first time in Shen’s decorated career, his photography seeks to speak to broader, multi-layered issues within the fabric of Taiwanese society. The photographs look towards history, national identity, ecological changes and more to create a collection of images
March 16 to March 22 In just a year, Liu Ching-hsiang (劉清香) went from Taiwanese opera performer to arguably Taiwan’s first pop superstar, pumping out hits that captivated the Japanese colony under the moniker Chun-chun (純純). Last week’s Taiwan in Time explored how the Hoklo (commonly known as Taiwanese) theme song for the Chinese silent movie The Peach Girl (桃花泣血記) unexpectedly became the first smash hit after the film’s Taipei premiere in March 1932, in part due to aggressive promotion on the streets. Seeing an opportunity, Columbia Records’ (affiliated with the US entity) Taiwan director Shojiro Kashino asked Liu, who had
At a funeral in rural Changhua County, musicians wearing pleated mini-skirts and go-go boots march around a coffin to the beat of the 1980s hit I Hate Myself for Loving You. The performance in a rural farming community is a modern mash-up of ancient Chinese funeral rites and folk traditions, with saxophones, rock music and daring outfits. Da Zhong (大眾) women’s group is part of a long tradition of funeral marching bands performing in mostly rural areas of Taiwan for families wanting to give their loved ones an upbeat send-off. The band was composed mainly of men when it started 50
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